Author: #content

The evil, necropolitical core of the American soul: Between locking up immigrant children in cages until they literally keel over dead; retaining close ties with Saudi Arabia, even as they murder journalists and kill thousands in Yemen, all for the sake of oil and weapons deals; and being more willing to deploy troops to the border in order to try and win an election than to deploy them to help American citizens in Puerto Rico recover from a devastating hurricane, it’s really been a banner year for the country’s deep-seated lust for lubricating the gears of empire with the blood of the downtrodden

Matthew McConaughey: In winning the California governor’s race, the Academy Award winner proved once again that his “Gavin Newsom” character is his greatest role ever

Voting-rights reform: Between several ballot measures passing in states like Michigan in Florida; outcry over egregious disenfranchisement in Georgia; blatantly undemocratic candidates like Kris Kobach losing; and the ever-more-obvious disparity between vote share and legislative seats won, this key and increasingly prominent issue is likely to continue being flagrantly disregarded by those in power (more…)

The trailer for season 5 of BoJack Horseman just dropped, which means it’s time for another round of predictions about the show! But whereas last year I went with the easiest, laziest predictions I could muster, this year I’m going to try and keep things a little more upbeat, focusing on the pleasant, optimistic side of a show that can sometimes be so dour! Here we go!

Argentina: At least the spirit of revolution against an incompetent government is alive in this South American nation, evidenced by the players of its national football team rising up against their coach halfway through the World Cup

Latent, unconsummated homophobia: Finally, a generation of liberals have an excuse to let out this long-repressed emotion in lieu of coming up with any actual jokes or insights about the relationship between Trump and Putin

Europe: I mean, they’re getting screwed over on the Russia thing too, but at least they’re trying to do something about the excessive massing of power in the hands of a small number of colossal corporations (more…)

Over the weekend, Brazilian outlet Globo published an account of the staggering incompetence on the part of representatives of the CBF, the Confederation of Brazilian Football, at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. It’s a record of stupidity and disarray so staggering, I had to translate it for an English-speaking audience. This is a fairly quick translation, which is why the cadence and sentence structure still rings of the original Portuguese. All credit goes to the original writers, Alexandre Lozetti, Edgard Maciel de Sá, Martín Fernandez and Tossiro Neto.

While the players and technical commission of the Brazilian national team work to put their extensive planning into practice at the World Cup, and coach Tite demands excellence in every training session and on-field action, the CBF’s participation in Russia has been a disaster. From voting for the wrong 2026 World Cup host to smashing a glass over a fan’s head, the scandals continue to widen the abyss between the efficiency Brazil’s team has shown on the pitch in recent years and the chaos of its administration. (more…)

Don Blankenship is one of the Republican candidates hoping to unseat West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin this fall. Yesterday, he released the following campaign ad, which cements him, even in the age of hideous Republicans like Roy Moore and Arthur Jones, as an all-time awful candidate: